


we shan't be parted no more

by richietosier



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Stan Lives, Time Travel, so does eddie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 21:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21186263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/richietosier/pseuds/richietosier
Summary: The clown's eyes harden and he says tightly, "This isn't fair. He shouldn't have brought you back. He shouldn't have brought either of you back." And he doesn't have to say who the 'either' is for Richie to know he's referring to Eddie.orEddie lives and the timeline gets screwed up





	we shan't be parted no more

When it's all over, Richie Tozier always starts the story the same way.

How he'd watched Eddie die in the deadlights; how his entire life passed through his eyes during those few moments; the gentle feeling when he saw that turtle, and then, then how--

How when he opens his eyes and sees Eddie, the dumb dick, saying the same words he'd said before he died in the deadlights, Richie panics and pushes him off of him to his left. How he scurries and rolls out of the way without another thought.

Then, a millisecond later, the flow of air as Pennywise's pincer hits the ground. Eddie meeting his eyes with a wide-eyed shock through the other side of it. The relief in his chest.

The rest always comes in bits and pieces: the losers regrouping as Pennywise begs for them to play; Richie’s eyes not leaving Eddie; his mind still remembering the slick feel of Eddie's blood on his hands and the debilitating grief he felt when he knew he was gone. 

He's way too out of it still to say how they won in the deadlights; his brain is still a jumbled mess; like the memories were dropped in there without a care. And now, here in the middle of the battle, he’s left to organize them. But, his mind can only focus on the one event and the red gushing anger and grief that followed.

But, through his internal dilemma, Mike says the have to make it small and says there's another way to make him small and that's when Richie remembers it all.

(_the crying, the grief, his life in distress and anger at everything in the world, the way that everything had changed_)

They make their way then, yelling obscenities that take the clown by surprise. Richie stays behind, stares at Eddie's unaltered torso as he walks away in front of him. He glances down at his hands, thinking he's going to see the blood that covered them-- they're dirty, sure, but not bloodied. 

He clenches his fists and breathes in deeply. 

"Richie," Bev mutters beside him, wearing a knowing look. Richie looks away and follows after the others. He feels like he’s watching from above as his body moves and says things he’s pretty sure he’s said before; nonsensical hurtful words that start to shrink the one that calls himself the ‘eater of worlds’.

Pennywise does a double-take after Richie says, 'sloppy bitch'. His eyes widen as he sees the lack of fear in Richie's eyes and there’s something else there, maybe a knowing, as he can see straight into Richie’s head. Like, he can see the future that Richie has lived, the one in which they kill him. 

Pennywise shrinks back from Richie as if he’s burned him, then. 

"He brought you back," Pennywise says in realization and the Losers turn towards Richie in confusion. He’s still big, like an overgrown spider on steroids, his pincers too close for comfort.

Richie doesn't react but briefly remembers the feeling of peace in the deadlights, wonders if that's what Pennywise is referring to. The clown's eyes harden and he says tightly, "This isn't fair. He shouldn't have brought you back. He shouldn't have brought _either _of you back." And he doesn't have to say who the 'either' is for Richie to know he's referring to Eddie. 

But still, his eyes go to his automatically and find Eddie already staring his way, a look of bewilderment on his face. Pennywise growls a guttural moan, filled with more pain than anger and then, in a pinch, he has Eddie’s arm in his mouth. And then, he chomps down.

It’s a shocking scene, one that will haunt Richie for time to come. He knew that Pennywise was onto him; he knew that he killed Eddie before; he knew that Pennywise knew the right way to get to Richie. 

He knew it all. And he didn’t stop it.

After that, he remembers the blaring sirens in his head and the red he sees when Pennywise throws Eddie’s body to the other side of the room like he’s some kind of fucking ragdoll. His eyes follow the motion, watch as Eddie writhes on the ground in agony. He awakes then, lifted from this haze.

He runs to Eddie, ignoring Beverly calling his name, presses his jacket to the missing limb. Eddie grimaces as he does and this scene, the pain in Eddie’s eyes, is so familiar that Richie wants to throw up. He knows what follows.

“Are you okay, buddy?”

“Rich-” he whimpers but stops. He blinks quickly, and behind his eyes, Richie can see that he’s trying not to cry. Richie glances behind him and sees the Losers still calling Pennywise names and Richie replays the horrific scene again. He blinks down at Eddie, having so many words to say but no idea how to express them. 

He wonders if this is some sort of second chance given to him by whatever being Pennywise was alluding to. And if this is the second chance, he's not going to throw it away by staring at Eddie bleeds out in front of him.

Not this time.

“Eddie-”

“Go,” Eddie mutters and juts his chin behind him. Richie pauses, the words weighing his tongue down and then nods, and turns.

Because, he wants--no, he _needs_ to kill this fucking clown.

The rest of the bits are less bright in his mind, dulled by the anger and the pain. All he remembers is yelling at Pennywise and him shrinking as he did in the deadlights. He repeats how unfair it is as he does, they crush his heart, and then, it’s over.

It’s done.

* * *

He panics on the way the hospital, pressing his jacket onto the wound, ignoring how slick the blood feels between his fingers. The blood is coming slower than it did before; no longer a fountain but a gentle stream, and it scares Richie. He wants to pull out his phone and research bleeding out but his phone is somewhere under Derry, and he doesn’t want to look away from Eddie’s face for a second.

In the front seat, Bill drives his rental car as fast as he can through the streets, muttering words of encouragement between curse words.

“Richie-” Eddie wheezes, opening his eyes for the first time in nearly five minutes. His head lulls in Richie’s lap and his labored breathing tickles his stomach.

“I swear if you make a ‘your mom’ joke right now dude, I’m going to lose it.” He hopes Eddie doesn’t hear the shakiness in his voice. Bill glances at him through the rear-view mirror, but Richie ignores him. 

He feels sick to his stomach thinking that he could’ve stopped this. He could’ve saved Eddie’s arm. For a brief moment, he wonders if this is how Bill felt about Georgie.

“That’s what your-” Eddie coughs, the red-black blood trickling out of his mouth as he does. Richie wipes away the blood from the corner of his mouth with his shirt without thinking about it. Eddie coughs again, and whispers, “Your mom, Richie.”, and closes his eyes, his breath coming in slow deliberate breaths.

“Eddie? Ed? Eds?” And despite the jostling, Eddie doesn’t wake up. And then that’s when the sobbing starts.

* * *

Richie watches Eddie die a second time in the hospital, throwing up when they called for the defibrillator and later again when it didn’t work the first three times. But, he rose.

He was alive, though in a medically induced coma as the doctors figured out what to do to his limb or lack thereof. The rest of the losers arrive as they lead Eddie to the operation room and in between whispers Bill tells them what they missed while Richie sits in a waiting room chair and tries not to feel sick. 

They share questioning looks with Richie whenever he dares to look at one of them, but Richie ignores them and instead chooses to stare down at his shaking hands. 

When the doctor arrives, Richie lies about being his brother automatically and to his relief, the losers lie along with him.

(Though, he wondered what kind of sick incestuous mind he’d have to be _THIS_ in love with Eddie.)

Eddie, who stayed in that coma for a few days as his body healed himself. Eddie, whose last words would have been a bad joke about Richie’s mom had Bill not driven over the park, leaving tire marks next to the swings where fourteen-year-old Richie would hang out and daydream about Eddie. 

Which, by the way, Richie owed him a gift basket. Because Eddie was alive thanks to his reckless driving.

And now, here was Eddie, staring at Richie with contempt as he retold his heroic story of dying, staying dead for three minutes, and living. (He didn’t dare mention the other time where he hadn’t lived.)

“Please tell me you washed your hands after.”

“After what?”

“After you threw up!” Eddie exclaims.

“Oh, right.” Richie glances down at his hands, just realizing how crusty they are with Eddie’s old blood from two days ago. As a matter of fact, his whole body is caked with dried blood; that’s probably why the nurses give him such dirty looks or why Ben almost tried to carry him to the shower while Eddie sat in surgery. “Oops.”

“Dude,” Eddie nearly gags, eyeing him up and down. Richie grins, goes to press one of his dirty fingers to Eddie’s clean face and Eddie shuffles as far away as he can, which isn’t very far. “I swear, Rich, I’m gonna fucking kill you.” He winces as the shifting moves on his stitches and Richie pulls back automatically. He groans as Eddie’s grin widens.

“Not cool, Eds.”

“Maybe if you fucking showered instead of being Stinky Mcfucking Stink.”

“Well, I’m sorry if I was too worried about you dying, dick,” Richie mutters, though he means no harm.

“I did die,” Eddie says, reaching beside him for the morphine drip. Richie wonders how much of that wince truly was fake. 

“Yeah, you did.” Though Richie doesn’t mention which instance he’s talking about. He glances down at the spot where Eddie’s missing right arm ought to be, up to his neck and to his eyes. Richie was surprised that Eddie hadn’t had a full-on freakout at the sight of his missing right arm. But, quite honestly it could be summed up to all the drugs he was currently on.

He motions to it now, “Dude, how are you going to jack-”

“Shut the fuck up. I swear, I will scream,” Eddie interrupts, messing with his morphine drip.

“I can’t wait for you to use the fact that you died as an excuse for years to come.”

“You bet your ass I am,” Eddie presses twice on his drip’s pump. Richie grins down at him, his heart full and shit. It’s like butterflies have given birth in his stomach and he feels so much like a fourteen-year-old girl for a moment.

Like, he’d feel less like a fourteen-year-old girl if he started talking about different boy-band members he found attractive. (And he sure has a long-ass list.) That’s how much Eddie affects him.

He clears his throat and looks away, focuses on the morphine making its way from the tube down towards Eddie’s IV and into his veins. He flicks his eyes back to Eddie as soon as he fixes his composure, grin back on his lips.

“You could go around like a circus act retelling the story,” Richie begins, trying to keep his voice steady as he stares into Eddie’s dark eyes. “This is the story of how I died,” he says, miming Eddie’s expressions and voice.

Eddie groans from the hospital bed, “You totally stole that bit from _Tangled_.”

“Yeah, but that movie’s amazing, so you can’t really blame me.”

“Yeah, I really can’t,” Eddie mutters and Richie doesn’t reply, he catches the glassiness taking over Eddie’s eyes as his new round of pain medicine kicks in. 

Richie figures he’ll be out for an hour or two and Richie knows he’s going to be spending that time analyzing their conversation for any weirdness on his part, as well as what he saw in the deadlights.

It’s killing him to not tell him everything that he was ready to tell him in that cave. It’s killing him to not tell him what he saw in the deadlights; like how everything fell apart around him when he left. And though he thought himself ready, he cowards out right now.

Like, how is he going to casually mention that the deadlights version of him cried for six months straight every time he saw any type of medication? Or how deadlights Richie scared that poor asthmatic kid who rang on Richie’s bell on Halloween by sobbing gently and giving him the whole bucket of candy?

(Or how he felt he lived through that all. How none of it felt like a dream.)

“Night, Eddie Spaghetti,” he whispers as Eddie’s eyelids grow heavy with sleep and his eyes close. He watches until the very last moment, and then some more, entranced by his breathing. 

When Eddie’s awake he breathes rough and heavy, usually caused by his lungs and mouth not working together in cooperation; the words coming faster than the air does. Richie figures this is why it was so easy for his mother to trick him that he had asthma.

But, when Eddie sleeps, his breaths are long and slow, like a calming song. And Richie can’t stop watching as his chest rises with each passing breath.

He counted them during the coma and awoke in a panic every time he managed to doze off to sleep. Only did the sight of a living Eddie, his warm breath hitting Richie’s pointer finger as he held it under his nose, calm him enough for his heart to go from erratic, to slightly less erratic. Not calm, not fucking close.

God, Eddie will certainly kill him if he knew Richie held his crusty fingers under his nose.

For a moment, he wonders if he’ll be checking if Eddie is alive every single time for the rest of his life. If he’ll be in L.A and have to call Eddie every morning in New York to make sure that this whole _Eddie is actually alive holy fucking shit_, isn’t a motherfucking dream.

He supposes if this what his shit brain has to give him: loopy Eddie and his deep calming breaths as Eddie strolls off into morphine-land, then all he can truly do is cherish it while he has it.

Because, if one day it’s gone, he doesn’t know how he’s going to react.

* * *

When Richie was eighteen, he kissed a boy for the first time.

He was gone from Derry by then; kicking off the Derry dust from his shoes nearly three years prior. Leaving Derry was not an easy task for fifteen-year-old Richie, and he left nearly kicking and screaming. 

Though he fell into a friend group easily in his new school, he would still stare at a picture that he had of the losers nightly and call Eddie whenever he could.

Usually, he would just ask him if Mrs. Kaspbrak missed Richie’s “sweet loving” just to listen to Eddie swear at him for ten minutes straight.

But, he soon found himself forgetting the names attached to the faces. Sometimes he didn’t know who the redhead at the left of the picture was; he didn’t know why they were all so clustered together, thigh to thigh, as they grinned toothily to the camera.

He would stare long and hard and repeat the names that he remembered, matching them to faces, but as the days passed, the names were harder to grasp and the faces slowly became strangers.

Then, one day, he awoke and didn’t recognize them at all. His mother made him clean his disgusting room that same week, and Richie had grabbed the picture by his bedside, shrugged, ripped it up, and thrown it away.

But this particular day, the day he kissed Liam huddled close together under the bleachers, the name _Eddie_ kept bouncing in his head, as did the image of that boy tucked close to him in a picture he once got rid of.

And, Richie supposes, nobody ever truly changes.

* * *

He doesn’t know who calls her. All he knows is that one day she isn’t there and the next one she is.

Richie didn’t know what he was expecting. He’d seen her before, had badgered Eddie until Eddie groaned and showed him a picture of the two of them from a few years ago. She looked so much like Mrs. Kaspbrak that Richie itched to make a ‘your mom’ joke, but instead, he stared with flat eyes as Eddie put his phone away.

Then, he’d made the ‘your mom’ joke, but mostly to shake off that cloying.

When she first arrived she’d taken one look at the Losers in the room and then didn’t meet their eyes the entire time they were there, like he was scared of _them_. At that moment, Richie realized she wasn’t too much like the other Mrs. K, because the other Mrs.K would’ve taken one look at the Losers and would’ve screamed bloody murder at the blood on Richie’s clothes. 

Which, fuck, he’s gotta shower or at least change clothes.

But, here as she coos over Eddie in that hospital bed, the similarities start again. Not in a good way, in a very bad way. Like, if she swaddled Eddie like a baby and held him to her breast, things would be slightly less weird. And the whole time that she’s here, Richie wonders how much of this Eddie one hundred percent hates.

There's got to be a part of him that enjoys or likes this, right? Like a super fucked up part of him?

Because for the most part, Eddie doesn't push her away. No, Eddie lies in bed and lets her continue to inspect his missing arm as she moves around him. She nearly cries when he spews out some bullshit about a house falling on them and his arm getting stuck in the debris. It’s a very intricate ritual they have, one that Richie can't look away from. It's almost masochistic how fascinating he finds it.

The sight, however, gets to be too much for many of the Losers and they slowly drift out one by one, leaving Bev and Richie alone in the weirdness.

And, he’s about to reach his limit. Not cause it's uncomfortable, he’s had his share of uncomfortable--he’s kind of the _king_ of uncomfortable.

But, no, he’s about to reach his limit because he’s jealous. Yeah, sure, he does not want to swaddle Eddie to his breast. And sure, he doesn't want to flit around like a nervous butterfly, pressing his fingers to his forehead and saying, "Oh, dear," after every millisecond.

But, being there and not having to lie about being his damn brother, that doesn't seem so bad. (Which, by the way, the night nurse took one look at the both of them and just knew it was a lie.)

And the nicknames, the casual touches that aren't followed by a strange glance from someone else, they don’t seem so bad either. Permission, he guesses is what he’s jealous of. The permission to touch Eddie without the gross repercussions; the permission to show his affection without fearing rejection or pain.

Bev squeezes his arm as she stands to leave, and he follows after her. She’d been trying to get him alone all this time, tried to bring up the deadlights while Eddie slept but Richie shrugged it off. 

He didn’t want to talk about it then. He didn’t understand what the hell Pennywise had gone about. How was he supposed to know who ‘sent him back’? If he even was sent back?

But, the truth of the matter is that the time he spent in the deadlights, the life he saw unfold before his eyes-- they both seem so real. Like, he’d lived it until one day, he was plucked from there and was back staring into Eddie’s eyes.

But, it’s been days since Pennywise has been obliterated, and now with Myra here he doesn’t have the excuse of keeping Eddie company. Now, he needs to come clean.

So, he follows Beverly outside the hospital and accepts the cigarette she offers, despite the fact he hasn’t smoke in almost six years. The smoke rises carefully as they spoke and disappears into the air. Richie wonders why he ever stopped smoking, god knows he has enough stress to smoke away.

“So, they sent you to interrogate me?” He asks after the silence gets too much, but in reality, he wants to get this over with.

“We both saw the deadlights, Richie.” She flicks her cigarette. "I..." she pauses and shakes her head. She swallows thickly and doesn’t meet Richie’s eyes.

"What?" he asks softly, the worry nagging and burrowing deeply in his stomach.

She closes her eyes and says, "I saw Eddie die. Down in the sewers. I knew he wasn’t going to come back."

Richie's heart quickens and he takes another drag to avoid talking. Here it is. 

"He's alive," he finally replies after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. He thinks of the man in the bed with the missing arm and the wife-mother with him.

"Yeah, I know. But, I swear...he died." she shakes her head. "He saved you, and then, then he was-"

"Impaled." Beverly turns at this, her eyes widening. Richie looks down at his feet, at his blood-splattered clothes and up to the sky. The sun was slowly turning orange, something that Richie hadn’t seen it do in a long time. It was his favorite time of the day. "And we fucking left him."

"Rich, how did-"

"I saw him die in the deadlights," Richie replies and finally meets her eyes. The relief is instant, and it feels good, really fucking good. He wonders how Bev kept the secret of them dying for 27 years when the relief of confession is so exhilarating. “I saw him die and I saw my life afterward. All of our lives, actually.”

Bev blinks and looks deep into his eyes as if trying to figure out if he’s lying to her. Richie keeps his face blank, sincere. Something clicks in her eyes.

"_God_, Richie," She blinks away tears, her fingers flicking them away as they fall. She laughs a watery laugh that turns into a sob halfway. "I was so sure. I didn't know- I-I-I-I," she stutters through tears.

Richie lays a hand on her upper arm and squeezes. "Okay, somebody has been hanging out with Bill too much." She rolls her eyes good-naturedly. Richie goes for another joke to distract her, "How's that going? You choose between the two of them yet?"

"Richie," she warns, her voice flat. All the humor is gone from her face too, drained of it.

Richie grimaces and drops his hand, takes a drag of his still-lit cigarette, the grey ashes falling to the ground. There's a moment of pregnant silence, the quiet between them heavy like a fog. 

The deadlights scenes run through his mind then, all the pain and shit he saw himself endure. It makes his chest hurt immediately, the pain digging into his sternum.

He presses a hand to it, remembering the way his heart broke when he peered into Eddie's eyes and didn't see that spark of life.

It makes him want to run back inside and press his face to Eddie's chest, whimper, and feel the heat of his body. 

"You saved him," she says quietly.

Richie shakes his head, dropping his hand. "No, no. I didn't. I didn't do anything."

"I saw him die too, Richie." She states. "I saw _us_ die. I know how each one of us dies and this was it for him. _Was_ supposed to be it for him."

“He’s missing an arm, Bev.” He mutters, remembering being dumbstruck before Pennywise attacked him. “I could’ve stopped it.”

“He’s alive,” Bev answers. “And the deadlights...they freeze you. It’s debilitating.”

Richie doesn’t answer, doesn’t believe her. He _knows_ he could’ve stopped Pennywise and curses himself for it quietly, has every day since the death of that stupid fucker.

“Do you want me to tell them?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says quietly, and then adds. “Not Eddie. I’ll tell him myself.”

Bev nods.

“How’s Bill?” he asks, thinking of Georgie and Eddie, of missing arms and survival. 

“He’s…” she pauses and shrugs. “He’s handling it. It’s tough, Richie.”

"Well, what now?" he asks and extinguishes his cigarette under his shoe, suddenly not in the mood for it anymore.

Bev shrugs and closes her eyes briefly. "I don't know. I guess we wait. Maybe I was wrong." Their eyes meet under the haze of her lit cigarette and Richie finds himself nodding.

“_You were right about Stan_,” he wants to say but keep it to himself. "How do I die?" he asks after a moment but knows Bev won't tell him. "Please tell me it's death by orgy," he jokes and Bev laughs a watery laugh.

"Beep beep, asshole.” They make their way back inside a few moments later and she says, “By the way, take a fucking shower. You stink.”

* * *

When Richie was twenty, there as a brief moment where he thought of coming out. 

He was out of his parents' house by then and was like eighty percent sure he was not going to be moving back in anytime soon. (Though, he was wrong.)

Plus, he was tired of living in the shadows and hiding who he truly was. 

But, then his dad died and seeing his mom so deeply in the throes of despair made him not want to tell her. All he could picture was her being disappointed and all he thought of was how much more sadness he would be bringing into her life. No grandchildren. Nobody to inherit the name that once belonged to his father.

He remembered those ugly words thrown to him like acid in adolescence and the words that were still whispered around his university. Those ugly words that made his entire body seize up in hives.

So, he pushed it deeper, deeper, and deeper. Until one day it wasn't something that he allowed himself to think about--much less speak of. Of course, there were a handful of guys in college and some more as he got older, but by the morning he'd forgotten that encounter even happened. 

He forgot what word defined the feeling in his chest when he thought of these guys; forgot for about 27 years.

And then when those 27 years later came to a halt, he got the itch to tell it again.

* * *

A few days later, Richie is surprised when he walks into Eddie's room and finds him alone. He halts at the door when he spots him sitting in his bed, blue polo on. The bed looks freshly made.

Eddie doesn't look surprised at his entering, it was like he was expecting him.

He stands.

"What's going?" Richie asks, but he doesn't want to know the answer. He knows what's coming up. Things are going back to the way they once were; the way they were supposed to be.

"I'm leaving," Eddie says and despite knowing it was to be, Richie's heart drops. "The doctor said I'm good to. He's transferring me to someone closer to home. I...already said my goodbyes to everyone else." He doesn’t meet Richie’s eyes as he speaks.

"Wh-where? Where are you going?" 

"Home," Eddie says, meeting his eyes, and he clarifies, "New York."

“Right,” Richie replies, not knowing what else he expected. Eddie was always going to go back to Myra, and Richie was always going to return to his empty apartment. It was the normal cycle of things. 

"Yeah," Eddie says and sits back down.

He looks so much like a child waiting for his dad to pick him up from tee-ball practice that Richie wants to laugh. He also wants to make a joke about how only Eddie's tip-toes touch the floor. However, there's a black sludge clogging his arteries and Richie finds himself struggling to breathe. 

He wants to throw up. He wants..._something_.

To tell Eddie what he saw in the deadlights; why it made him so distraught; why every time he looks Eddie in the eyes, he can't look for more than ten seconds without wanting to combust.

Why Eddie should ditch it all and run away with him. He wants to tell him all.

(_Eddie, remember when you died and you said the 'your mom' joke? It was your last sentence, Eddie. I lost it when you died. Did you really die? Eddie-_)

But, instead, he stares like a dummy and says, “Your feet don’t touch the floor.”

“Shut up, asshole,” Eddie says with no inflection, and for a moment, Richie sees something behind the brown of his eyes. It’s gone with a blink of his lashes and Eddie fakes a smile, the motion robotic.

The nurse arrives with the paperwork then and Eddie signs as Richie leans against the wall in complete silence. When she leaves, Eddie slowly makes his way to him and claps on his shoulder with his good arm. “Thanks, Rich.”

Richie glances at his bandaged right shoulder, the missing part making Eddie’s jacket hang limply from the armpit down, where Pennywise bit. He looks into Eddie’s eyes, ready.

“Eddie-”

“We’ll be in touch, Richie,” Eddie interrupts before he can continue and Richie swallows down his words, throat oddly tight.

He watches as Eddie leaves.

* * *

In Atlanta, Stanley Uris turns to his wife and says, "I had the weirdest dream last night."

**Author's Note:**

> title is a quote from 'maurice' by E.M Forster (an amazing queer novel).  
full quote: “And now we shan't be parted no more, and that's finished."


End file.
